13 comments:

Well, here's someone who is delighted that this was the outcome. I know that no complaint was made to the staff, because a complaint simply would not have been ignored. Even though I wasn't there in the 70s, the same staff were at Duncroft when I was. Knowing them pretty well, I could never imagine them just blowing the complaint off. That's what made me suspicious in the first place. Especially when one of the 70s group said that she told her social worker and the social worker allegedly said to tell the staff. Seems unreasonable to me that the social worker would not have picked up the phone and called Margaret Jones to advise her that this girl had complained.

The real story on Charlotte is that she returned from home leave high on acid and was acting irrationally. She was put into what we used to call the isolation room - which I think had been upgraded and was referred to as a 'soft room' because it stopped girls banging their heads on the wall or whatever nonsense they might get up to - overnight and for a period of 24 hours, with a member of the staff on constant duty outside the door. I guess with the arrival of hallucinogenic drugs, some of the residents thought it was okay to take them and run around the school. I can't even imagine doing any drug of that nature in an environment like Duncroft. And as to Margaret Jones' statements that they were not empowered to put girls in the soft room/isolation for any length of time unless Dr. Mason or another attending psychiatrist ordered it would be 100% true.

It was hard to see any other legal outcome, since the Duncroft stories had become such a media bunfight. It remains as worrying as before that the entire Savile thing was launched with the full power of the UK legal apparatus, but never, at any point had any legal entity spoken to the staff of that school. Surrey police never spoke to them in 2008. The Met never spoke to them in 2012, nor did the CPS even later.

The first people to speak to the most authoratative source available - the Headmistress - was Mail Newspapers!! It's as big an indictment of Operation Yewtree and this entire media circus as any that I could think to write.

Like the fact that Savile's DNA proved no match for any samples at Scotland Yard, I'm guessing that so far as Savile himself is concerned all this proves however, is they have even less proof than before. The truth would have all been so much simpler if they had bothered to try and find out what it was, instead of just telling stories.

Good news. I do like the pussyfooting around they have to do in these letters. Under no circumstances can they say that they have evidence that proves a complainant lied or was wrong, so it's all 'Savile in his offending against you' (surely libellous if he were alive) and "we haven't decided that you gave a false account".

Surely not everyone questioned was alleging offences against them by Savile, yet this is what the letter suggests by the lazy wording!

BTW readers, Sally Stevens had produced a new blog-post in response to the latest developments. You can read it here !http://rockphiles.typepad.com/a_life_in_the_day/2014/11/the-end-of-the-beginning-.html